Early Memories of Saugatuck, Michigan : 1830-1930
Author: Heath, May Francis
Publisher: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company; Grand Rapids, Mich: 1930

REV. JAMES F. TAYLOR

James F. Taylor came from Scotch-Irish ancestry and was born in Penn Yan, N. Y., in 1824, his boyhood being spent on his father's farm. He prepared for college at Franklin Academy at Pratsburg and matriculated in Amherst College in 1848, graduated from Union College in 1852 and pursued post- graduate courses at Princeton and Yale, thus gaining a most liberal education and he was ordained to the ministry of the Congregational church at Pekin, N. Y., in 1855, served continually as a pastor of churches in New York and Michigan and came to the Saugatuck Congregational church in 1868 where he served ten years, when he retired from active pulpit work, though he officiated at weddings and funerals long years after. His impaired health caused him to seek God's great outdoors and in 1872 he purchased a farm on the lake shore and moved his family from Saugatuck in 1877—and here at Lake Ridge Farm he established a successful fruit farm and nursery which he directed to the time of his death in 1907.

Mr. Taylor was married to Miss Mary Porter of Penn Yan, N. Y., in 1858 and her death in 1896 was his greatest sorrow. This union was blessed with five children, three of whom survive, William and Mabel, of Washington, D. C., Grace, at the old homestead in Douglas, and they also had one adopted daughter, Anna Henjes Breggar, who resides in Bangor, Mich.

He was 'for many years a member of the school boards of Saugatuck and Douglas, and a member of the County board of school commissioners. And for the young people in the communities wherein he was pastor he exerted a wide influence for better manhood and womanhood, and in all his splendid work for uplift he was assisted by his efficient wife.